Honestly, I just can't get enough of fruit nails lately and I knew I wanted to do something with strawberries, but I knew that I didn't want to do anything too similar to what I did last year - even though I knew I was going to be using the same stamping image. It wasn't until I was scrolling through my own Instagram feed and was reminded of this mani from a couple of months ago that inspiration struck and I knew exactly what I was going to do. Honestly, I'll take inspiration where I can find it and I love, love, love where this one took me. 

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When I ordered He Forced Me To Ruin My Dress from Jen & Berries during PPU a few months ago, I knew that it was one of those polishes that was going to make a stunning base for nail art - in fact, I already have a couple of other mani's planned for the future with this as my base. I knew that the addition of the red and black flecks through the formula would work perfectly with the strawberries design. I also knew that Dimension Nails' Bearded Ghoul**, which is a classic red base with a pink shimmer and some subtle black flecks through it would be basically a perfect strawberry shade. Finally, I considered going with a holo green for the leaves, but I liked the idea of keeping the whole look black, white and red, so I went with Color Club's Beyond, which does have a little bit of a green tinge to it at the end of the day.

When I do reverse stamping, I always prefer to do it on my stamper head (I don't like adding a second step and I personally find transferring decals to have a higher chance of messing up.) I picked up the image using my personal favorite black stamping polish and then used a dotting tool to fill in the body of the strawberries and a nail art brush to fill in the leaves. I'm always careful when filling in my designs because if you're not careful you can end up smudging the image, so be sure to use a light touch and try not to drag your dotting tool or brush over the image too much. To transfer the image, I applied one thin layer of sticky base coat over my base polish and waited about a minute for it to get tacky before transferring the image to my nails.

Once I was cleaned up and happy with my stamping, I sealed the design in with a water based top coat. Next, once it was completely dry, I applied a layer of glitter smoothing top coat because the reverse stamping can end up looking a bit lumpy. And then finally, I finished with a quick dry glossy top coat for shine and strength. And voila!

I mean, I was a little kid in the height of 80s Strawberry Shortcake, so this sort of feels like a modern, grown up version of that... if a strawberry mani can feel modern and grown up, which I think it can. I also just absolutely love these polishes together and would say don't be surprised if you see them together in future mani's as well... they sort of feel meant to be!

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